


it looks like i'll always break the promises to myself, sweetheart

by OrsFri



Series: eve of the hour [2]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-30
Updated: 2017-08-30
Packaged: 2018-12-21 19:32:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11951112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OrsFri/pseuds/OrsFri
Summary: Pre-relationship. An exploration of Gilbert, and down the rabbit hole it goes.





	it looks like i'll always break the promises to myself, sweetheart

**Author's Note:**

> Look if the description makes you uncomfortable, for any reason, just close the tab. Ctrl+w, Command+w, press the home button, or whatever device you're using. There's nothing much actually, but if the description sounds too _personal_ in any way (which it does for me, actually), then trust that instinct and stop.

"Hey, I'm unbearably lonely. Call me?"

This is bullshit. Gilbert is staring at a mirror. His phone is held in his hand, red light blinking to alert him of the need to charge _in the next five minutes, battery level is at 2%, it is about to die, and you'll lose your final contact with the rest of the world, oh no, what will you do now, Gilbert?_

Gilbert is alone and lonely and for a while, just for a day, he can't bring himself to exist in reality.

-

Gilbert sits in a diner, munching on fries as he checks his emails and his newsfeed, his social medias and then his old messages, and pretends he isn't as starkly alone as he feels right there and then.

Two tables down, the sound of children chattering, exasperated but patient parents trying to get the kids to decide on what to eat, and Gilbert remembers.

-

Just because people call him a _manchild_ doesn't make him _like_ a child; he has absolutely no idea how to act when someone grabs a kid and thrust it up to his face, saying, _take it, look after it, it's yours for the next - oh, I don't know, four hours?_

Gilbert is not a good babysitter. After catching him dozing on the couch while the kid is emptying rolls upon rolls of toilet paper from the kitchen cupboard (or smearing red lipstick across the tiled floors, or rolling around beside Gilbert with a toy puppy in the kid's arms, to name a few incidents), Gilbert finally freed himself from all future babysitting duties that his friends and family may dump onto him. Bless.

In fact, the only instance when Gilbert's babysitting doesn't go wrong _at all_ is when their parents leave him alone with Ludwig. Young Ludwig is, to say the least, a precocious child, too sensitive and quiet for his own good: always learning too fast too early that everyone forgets how _little_ he is. He looks after himself completely without Gilbert having to do anything at all, and that means Gilbert grows careless, Gilbert forgets, and Gilbert treats Ludwig like how he treats an older child thirsty for independence, thirsty for acknowledgement: Gilbert treats Ludwig too callously by teaching him too early to tuck away all his frayed ends - even from himself.

That, he sees now, is his greatest failure.

-

He closes his eyes. He vaguely feels like screaming. He wants to cry. Instead, Gilbert finishes the last of his fries, washes it down with iced coffee even though it is already the late evening (he isn't planning on sleeping that night anyway), slips the bills under the glass, and walks out.

-

Here is a perspective that Gilbert never tells anyone: 

Gilbert believes that the world will be better off without him.

Somewhere along the line, he comes to this realisation that his existence is redundant - that is a fact. No one _hates_ him, per se, but the world may have been better if someone else is born instead, an opportunity for his place in this world, a more worthy _life_ than whatever fuck-up that Gilbert has managed to pull together. 

Ludwig may protest that; Ludwig will call him a good older brother, as good as he could have been, even though Gilbert at least plays a heavy hand in building up the shit that Ludwig has to deal with these days. Ludwig will call him a good brother, because he is a good kid, a sensitive one like that, even though they know full well in their hearts that Gilbert has been pretty shitty as far as brotherly influence goes.

Liz will roll her eyes and snort and smack him over the head; tells him that yes, he is a waste of space, but who will she fight with without him? "Embrace your fate as a sidekick," she will tease, and Gilbert will mock-gasp and, affronted, kick her off the couch.

Roderich will just blink, realise he can't be bothered, and informs him that he can make himself less redundant, if he will just do this thing or another for him, won't he?

Mr. George will ask him what this is about, amused but impatient, and he would get it, won't he? The man has mountains of issues of his own, and he'll understand, but he's not going to be helpful anyway because he's dead and six feet under, happily rotting next to his dead husband.

Ivan... and here Gilbert needs to pause. Who is he to Ivan? Who is Ivan to him? Questions, questions; questions that doesn't demand an answer and doesn't have an answer. Gilbert doesn't want to think about it, parse through the intricacies, pore into what everything means and what _his_ reactions imply. He knows Ivan is strangely attached to him, almost like an emotional dependency. And dare Gilbert say, to be relied on, to be _important_ to someone - well, doesn't that feel good?

But all attachments must fade, and all unhealthy reliance must be stopped; Ivan is an impressionable guy trying to fumble his way around finding an identity, and Gilbert is perhaps a cautionary tale, an example to be made to warn off the naive and the innocent, and for mothers to bend down and mutter to their kids, _look, listen, be good if you don't want to end up like_ him.

Ivan may miss him when he is gone, but Gilbert is sure that even that, will fade.

-

Gilbert walks faster, these days: shoulders hunching, head lowered and eyes looking forward, marching down the streets like he is on the brink of being late, faster and faster and faster and _faster,_ almost desperate in his hurry to skip the buffer time and reach his destination. 

What Gilbert really wants to do, is to stop and just. Collapse. In an empty road devoid of people, devoid of anything but him and the buildings and nothing else, the only man alive in the world in a city. 

Alas, that is not meant to be, apocalypses don't just roll around every other day and conveniently decimate the human population to leave him as the lone survivor. All the more's the pity; life may actually be interesting otherwise.

Gilbert ducks under the shelter at the bus-stop just as the warning trickle of raindrops begins falling. Autopilot: checks the phone. Oh look, a missed call from Ivan.

On a whim, he calls back. Ivan picks up. 

"You called?"

Ivan laughs. "Yeah. I should have known you would not pick up."

"I never do," Gilbert agrees, "you know me: I have a very intimate relationship with the qwerty keyboard."

"Oh, I _do_ know that. All those tweets and posts everyday, and somehow you _never_ pick up a single phone-call." Someone shouts something. Ivan holds the phone away and yells something back, too muffled for Gilbert to figure it out. "I was going to ask you if you're free."

"What, like now?" Gilbert holds his phone away to check his time, and then feels ridiculously stupid because hello, he's wearing a watch on his right wrist already. He may have a good hour to kill, if he plans his time carefully. "I am free, but you sound... occupied."

"Ah, they're just leaving; if you're busy then I'll catch lunch with them, but otherwise I can eat with you." Gilbert can imagine the shrug from Ivan's end of the call. "Where are you right now?"

"Stranded at the bus-stop near the McDonald's. Where are _you?"_

"My lecture just ended. Wait there; I'll head over right now."

Gilbert tries to reason with himself that encouraging Ivan any further - any further at _all,_ especially knowing how smitten Ivan is with him - is a bad idea. But then his brain whispers, _why not,_ and the rest of his body demands, _what have_ you _got to lose,_ and his heart aches and his stomach pools, and Gilbert is, Gilbert is -

Gilbert is _oh so_ very lonely.

He clears his throat. "It's going to rain soon; bring a spare umbrella along. I forgot mine."

Ivan sounds like he's grinning. "I will - see you soon."

"Yeah sure. Bye." _Click._

-

Ivan flushes prettily: pink at the cheeks, spreading across the nose, up the ears. That is the blush of emotions - his blush from fever, from alcohol - those tend to be hotter and angrier, creeping down his neck and burning angrily at the apples of his cheeks and rising up the bridge of his nose.

Ivan ducks his head, although his height means that he's still looking down at Gilbert. He opens his mouth to say something - retort, mayhap, to Gilbert, but Gilbert doesn't even know what he's just said. "Jeez, don't blush like a little girl," Gilbert interrupts, and quickly moves the topic onto something else, although he doesn't remember that, either. Doesn't remember anything of their conversation, anything that occurred on that day, in that week - his memory blanks out, mind folding into itself, plains of white upon white of snow, for a whole two months. Nothing.

Nothing, except that sweet pink blush of Ivan that blooms in response to whatever crude thing that spat out of Gilbert's mouth again. A splash of colour amidst all that white fields of memory, and that is something precious. Maybe. Perhaps. Gilbert doesn't want to look too deep into it, after all.

-

Gilbert examines his burger. It looks like a bunch of squashed microwaved food stacked together. It also looks like a metaphor for his current state of mind. Gilbert thinks Mr George's literature lessons are getting to him.

Beside him, Ivan wolfs down his burger while flipping through some papers with his free hand.

"If you're busy -" Gilbert begins, when Ivan barely manages not to choke on his burger before he is fishing a highlighter from his bag to mark out a phrase. "You know you could have just told me to get McDonald's takeaway for you, right?"

"No, because it was raining, and you didn't have an umbrella," Ivan points out. "Also, I just want to get out of campus."

"To have Mc's?"

"Well, I didn't want to walk around to look for places to eat while it is raining so heavily, and McDonald's is right there: cheap, convenient, and the epitome of a college student lifestyle."

Ivan is being very reasonable. Gilbert _hates_ that Ivan is being so reasonable. Then again, that Ivan _chooses_ to eat with Gilbert in the first place suggests some underlying motive and is less than reasonable. Gilbert, wisely, does not push. He takes a bite of his burger.

"Honestly," Ivan suddenly speaks, darting glances at Gilbert as he scans through the page, "it's my own fault that I am rushing through the paper now. I forgot that the professor assigned readings."

"Read the intro and the conclusion, and you'll muddle through," Gilbert advises, "that's how I got through my first year."

"As my senior, you should be encouraging me to be a good proper student."

"Well, it's uni. You don't have enough time to read every single readings and still get by." Study smart, not hard, as they say. "Unless you're abandoning any social life or part-time job, is failing a course, or aiming for valedictorian. Then read _all_ the readings."

"That's fair," Ivan concedes, "except I _am_ failing this class, so I need to - you know." He gestures at the paper.

Gilbert vaguely remembers how finals are in a month's time; somehow, he can't bring himself to care. "You'll do fine. You worked hard throughout the year."

"Comforting," Ivan says, lips curling in a mockery of a smile. But the edges of his eyes are crinkled, and that is more real than any of the smiles that Ivan normally pastes across his face, and Gilbert has to quash the weird feeling at the bottom of his stomach before he can recognise it.

-

Gilbert dreams.

He doesn't always remembers them, and sometimes he knows he doesn't have any - yes, he knows what science says, but he also knows for sure that he _doesn't_ dream - but when he do, he never feels rested.

Gilbert remembers the dream this time, and he lies on his bed, letting time slip on and on in steady trickles, and can't quite bring himself to reconcile with reality.

Ivan doesn't understand the importance of dreams, Gilbert believes, the weight of it, the _realness_ of it, the way dreams linger, haunt, dodges your steps; a dream as a parallel realm created by a person, unique from all other, an amalgamation of memories and emotions and all nonsense, fuelled by myths and superstitions, old beliefs and other mystics, a wondrous tripartite that is the dreams and the dreaming and the dreamers.

I am alive, Gilbert thinks and wants to say, I am alive and I have a soul and I am sentient, because I can dream. Dreams are what set us apart, dream-eaters and dream-makers, I dream because I am alive and I exist, and I have a mind that is one foot grounded in this world and the other transcending, beyond the confinements of a single reality.

Then the hunger pang strikes low and gurgling in his stomach, and Gilbert is forcefully dragged back into reality, into himself - he is Gilbert Beilschmidt and Gilbert Beilschmidt is him, no more, no less, not a character, not a figment of imagination, but uniquely and equivocally him - before he forces himself to roll off the bed to get some food.

-

_Hi, I'm Gilbert._

"Hello, Gilbert."

_I'm lonely._

"That is a common state-of-mind."

_What am I doing?_

"Good question."

_Sometimes, I wonder if I actually exist._

"Are we getting existential now? My, we are. Well then, Gilbert, then we have to look into which schools of thought you're looking into. Of course, we can always go to the basics - Descartes, for instance, believed that -"

_I want to stop existing for a while._

"Oh?"

_Goodnight._

"Oh. Alright. Goodnight, Gilbert. Sleep well."

_Click._

(But of course, the nature of this conversation, is that it never happens, because Gilbert is lonely and he is alone and there is no one he can talk to about this, no one but him and only him, no Ludwig, no Ivan, no Liz, no one else because he is Gilbert and he is a Beilschmidt and Beilschmidts don't talk about _feelings,_ much less one he cannot even face up to - can't even _recognise._

He lives in his own head more often than not (although no one knows that), and measures out realities in his brain (no one knows that either), until everything gets jumbled up in a mass of confusion, entropy increasing by the minute. This is who he is now, a raving man gone half-mad, tired and drained and so desperate for a purpose that it makes him dangerously volatile.

But of course, no one knows that.

He doesn't talk about it.)

-

Gilbert can remember this moment, and he knows he will continue to remember this for days to come, because Ivan is standing in front of him, clenching and unclenching his hands, staring at Gilbert like he wants to kiss him, but prevented from - from pretty much _everything_ in the world, starting from Gilbert and Gilbert himself.

(Does he will he should he maybe -)

Gilbert's brain decides, to hell with it, and Gilbert's heart ache and the blood flows south and north and gives him a heady rush as he leans forward and tugs, dragging Ivan forward by the collar and planting a kiss as hard as he can on Ivan's lips.

Ivan freezes for a grand total of two seconds before he starts kissing back.

-

Gilbert feels like he is floating and grounded at the same time, a confusing mash of feelings in which he just _can't_ figure out what's real and what's not.

He closes his eyes, and reminds himself the weightiness of dreams, and lets himself savour every moment of it instead. 


End file.
